North Korea launches perfect Italian pizza

North Korea has opened its first pizzeria after a decade of clandestine international research.

By Peter Foster in Beijing

9:41AM GMT 16 Mar 2009

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart - the nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria.

The Pyongyang perfect pizza

The launch of Pyongyang's first Italian restaurant meanwhile brings to fruition a ten-year effort by Kim Jong-il - a renowned gourmand and lover of western food - to create the perfect pizza and pasta in his homeland.

Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".

In the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.

Despite the food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

"Our people should be also allowed to enjoy the world-famous food," the manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper.

The paper, which is often seen as a mouthpiece for the communist regime, added the restaurant had proved to be a major hit after it opened in the capital Pyongyang in December.

"I've learned through TV and books that pizza and spaghetti are among the world's famous dishes, but this is the first time that I've tasted it," Jung Un-Suk, 42, told the newspaper, "They have unique flavours," she said.

The news that Kim's dream of making genuine Italian food available in the capital has been realised comes as North Korea threatens to test-launch a rocket which the US believes is capable of striking America.

Last week North Korea notified international aviation and maritime agencies of its plan to launch a "communications satellite" between April 4-8, further heightening tensions in the region.

On Monday Japan and South Korea announced their intention to demand UN action against North Korea if it test-fired a Taepodong-2 missile in defiance of UN resolutions imposed after Pyongyang tested its atomic bomb in 2006.